In May of 2015, I visited New York City with my girlfriend, Lisa. Our purpose was
to see the city before Mayor Wilhelm “CP Time” de Blasio turned it over to racists,
sidewalk urinaters, drug-dealers, thugs and cop haters.

We barely made it in time.

Amongst the many things we did when we were there was to visit Ellis Island, via a
sail-by pic-op of the Statue of Liberty.

I traced my grandfather, Michael Weinbaum, in the Ellis Island Research Lab. He
came over from Akkerman, Russia, a suburb of Odessa Russia. Michael sailed to
the US in 1909; four years after Jews were first murdered in Akkerman. Some
Jews escaped to Odessa. Most were killed in Pogroms and the Holocaust of WW2.

All of the 800 Jews remaining in my grandfather’s town were shot to death on the
banks of the Leman River.

He settled in Chicago, where an enclave of other relatives had recently arrived.

My grandfather died by his own hand in, allegedly because of the stock market crash
of 1929. He left a wifemy Grandmother Roseand two young sons. The eldest
was David, who I was named for after he was murdered by the Nazis just before the
end of WW2, and my father, Melvin.

They did identify as G0d’s chosen people. Besides, the Jew-haters wouldn’t let up
on showing their malice for them.

At least that was passed down to me.

I didn’t grow up knowing or obeying G0d’s laws as passed down to Moses from
Mount Sinai 3,250 years earlier, in front of the whole Jewish population, just
escaped from the slavery in Egypt.

How did my religion get lost? How did my family end up in Russiawith a
German name? Did they practice Judaism in the old country(s)?

Now entering my seasoned years, I may be finding some answers.

The most important inheritance you can
leave your children is the example you set in life

Recently, I brought up the subject with my friend, Israeli Rabbi Moshe Rothchild. He
told me about a student of his who asked his grandfather what he should be when
he grew up. The old man thought for a moment and answered: “You should be an
underwater archaeologist.”

I asked the Rabbi what that meant. Moshe told me the story of thousands of
immigrant Jews who, upon glimpsing the Statue of Liberty on their approach to
Ellis Island, threw their Jewish identity into the harbor. Thousands of Yarmulkes,
tzitzis, tallises and teifillin were flung into the ocean in an attempt to erase their painful past. Even side-locks were chopped off.

This was the New World. Things were going to be better! In America they wouldn’t
be bound by the laws of the past.

This struck me like one of young Mike Tyson’s left hooksright
between the eyes.
While stunning, this was the beginning of understanding my interrupted
Jewish roots.

At least ten of my relatives lived in a one-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment on the
west side of Chicago. As their finances improved after WW2, they moved out.
Seeking the American Dream seemed to be working; keeping solid with their
Judaismnot so much.

Many of the Jews who symbolically threw their Jewish artifacts into the Atlantic
converted to Christianity upon arrival.

Some hid their Judaism either from shame or fear of the anti-Semites. Others stayed
Jews but didn’t obey the laws because it was impossible to keep jobs due to the
Sabbath. And some stayed obedient, loyaland poor. They were employed
Monday and fired Saturday when they couldn’t, by Jewish law, show up to work.

My father taught me that it was special to be a Jew and that I should be proud. I
sensed that it was a good and right thing for me to identify as a Jew. I fought many
a street-fight defending my religion through my youth, as I do now on the radio
and in print.